With the growth of use of the Internet, more and more people have access to e-mail, and more and more entities use e-mail to communicate with customers, potential customers, or other people of interest. In, for example, a marketing context, companies periodically send e-mails to customers with new product information, special offers, company news, or other information.
As a result, recipients find themselves receiving more e-mails than they want to read. Recipients may get angry at the sender, may “opt-out” of further mailings (if that option is available), or may simply stop reading the mailings. Thus, the benefits from sending mailings are reduced and recipients may not get information they otherwise would have found useful.